Weeelll... I've not even seen Perfect Blue and I furking LURVE Tokyo Godfathers and Millenium Actress. This looks fantastic! The storyboards on Tokyo Godfathers are astounding... got the big ol' collectors edition to boot... I can't wait...

Very exciting. It was playing at the Leeds International Film Festival last year and I beleive that it got a really good reception. The visuals are breathtaking in some parts. I wasn't aware that it was HD though (is the film showing in HD or just the trailers?), thanks for the heads up Lugz.

Just so everyone knows what it's all about...

In the future, a revolutionary new psychotherapy treatment called PT has been invented. Through a device called the "DC Mini" it is able to act as a "dream detective" to view inside people's dreams and explore their unconscious thoughts. Before the government can pass a bill authorizing the use of such an advanced psychiatric technology, one of the prototypes is stolen, sending the research facility into an uproar. In the wrong hands, the potential misuse of the device could be devastating, allowing the user to completely annihilate a dreamer's personality while they are asleep. Renowned scientist, Dr. Atsuko Chiba, enters the dream world under her exotic alter-ego, code name "PAPRIKA," assisted by Detective Kogawa Toshimi,(also victim of a recurrent dream) in an attempt to discover who is behind the plot to undermine the new invention.

Then Dream and reality blend, to a point where you start asking yourself questions, Ã la Perfect Blue.

It looks as though Sony will be pushing it onto Blue-ray. Could it be the first 'new' Anime in the world to grace this format? I know that 'Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence' and 'Steamboy' are going to be on it but were they done in HD?

Want to be the envy of all animation fans? Then enter our give-away to win a 6"x4" statuette based on Satoshi Kon's Paprika!

One of five copies will be awarded to each of the winners selected from a random drawing of e-mails sent to animecontest@gmail.com

The deadline for entries is Midnight US Eastern 4/1/07.

Paprika is the latest movie from Satoshi Kon, the anime auteur responsible for the acclaimed movies Perfect Blue , Millennium Actress and Tokyo Godfathers , and TV series Paranoia Agent. Produced at Studio Madhouse, Paprika adapts a novel from influential sci-fi writer Yasutaka Tsutsui, whose work also inspired the recent Madhouse/Mamoru Hosoda movie The Girl Who Leapt Through Time.

Anime's queen of voice acting Megumi Hayashibara plays the role of Dr. Atsuko Chiba, a scientist who must contend with her own alter-ego "Paprika" in order to solve the mystery behind the thief of a device that can read a person's subconscious thoughts.

Sony Pictures Classics' North American release of the film opens May 25th in New York and June 1st in LA.

If all you have to do is send an e-mail to the aforementioned address, I figure it's worth a shot. Maybe the Zone will end up getting all five, that'd be kind of cool.

Huntley Haverstock wrote:I was lucky enough to catch an advance screening of Satoshi Kon's "Paprika" last night in Washington D.C. I'm not a hardcore anime fan -- I like what I've seen of Hayao Miyazake's work, and I've enjoyed a few series that have run on Adult Swim in the past few years, but that's about it. But Satoshi Kon's "Paranoia Agent" is one of that handful of series to really engage me, and I've heard good things about the director's previous films, "Millennium Actress," "Perfect Blue," and "Tokyo Godfathers." So when the trailer for "Paprika" appeared online, I was psyched to see it, and when this advance screening rolled around, I jumped at the chance.

The director, humble and self-deprecatingly funny, was present to introduce the film. He invited the audience to think of it as a roller-coaster ride, rather than trying to analyze every moment. He's exactly right. Intellectually, a few aspects of the film were kind of a letdown for me. But as pure entertainment, "Paprika" is a blast -- giddy, creepy-cool, and loaded with exciting action, intriguing mystery, and marvelously imaginative imagery.

I'll do my best to avoid spoilers here. The film deals with a device that lets one person enter and affect another's dreams, and what happens when it's stolen and put to sinister use. The title heroine is a perky, insightful "dream detective" -- think Amelie meets Supergirl -- who's also the dream-world alter ego of a stuffy, uptight, emotionally repressed scientist who helped invent the dream-reading device. The interplay between these two vastly different personalities is one of the least explored -- yet most interesting -- aspects of the film. The film's supporting cast is also largely well-developed and likable, with many of the film's funniest moments arising naturally from their personalities and reactions to the increasingly strange events around them.

As the search for the dream device plays out in both the waking and dreaming worlds, we also meet a middle-aged cop troubled by painful dreams of a murder investigation that's got him stumped. How he resolves that dilemma, with and without Paprika's help, not only ties in well with the main story, but pays off beautifully on its own. For me, it was one of the most moving parts of the entire film.

"Paprika" is also first-rate eye candy, packed with dazzling imagery and playful visual wit. The superb opening sequence, in which our heroine makes nighttime Tokyo her playground, flitting from billboards to computer screens to an image on a passerby's T-shirt, is only a taste of the amazing sights to follow. (It doesn't hurt that it's accompanied by the film's shimmering, irrepressibly cheery theme music, which never quite wears out its welcome.) There are subtler visual pleasures here, too; a close-up of raindrops merging on a car window to illustrate a discussion about fusing personalities, and the way the director adds chills to an otherwise warm and funny scene by having someone's bloody hand quietly smear itself across a window in the background.

The film is full of sly in-jokes to please just about everyone. The otaku at the screening roared their approval at several references I just didn't get -- Paprika done up as the Monkey King from Chinese myth; missiles firing from a robot's chest; a hero silhouetted against a skyline at sunset, with a beautiful woman swooning in his arms. But I dug the director's spot-on nods to several classic films, including From Russia With Love and Roman Holiday, as well as a clever little homage to Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep.

As I said, if you keep your brain mostly disengaged, "Paprika" is great fun. But a few elements struck a sour note with me. The villain's way too easy to guess, for one thing, although there are a few clever and unsettling twists to that part of the story. It may also be telling that the film's title character appears nowhere on the U.S. poster. After building her up as a clever, brave, and resourceful heroine for the first half of the film, she abruptly becomes a helpless and much-abused damsel in distress for much of the second half, in need of big strong men to come and save her. (I'm a guy, but maybe I'm just watching too much Joss Whedon; a female friend who saw the film with me found all of that "totally hot.") There's also a romantic element that arrives out of left field, and seems so wildly out-of-character, and so unearned, that it feels like cheap pandering to the film's core fanboy audience.

Even with these apparent flaws, "Paprika" is just too much fun to dislike. Throughout the movie, there's a smart, subtle running theme about reconciling the dreams of childhood with the realities of adult life. The film's wistful, perfectly understated last scene ties that idea up superbly.

The film apparently gets a wider U.S. release in June. Despite its flaws, I think it'll make superb summer entertainment for anyone -- otaku or otherwise -- who likes funny, exciting, imaginative films.